News of the Week; February 15, 2017

By Jon Festinger on February 21, 2017

GAMES

  1. New York sues Time Warner over throttled League of Legends speeds
  2. Elite: Dangerous pen-and-paper RPG stymied by intellectual property dispute – Complaint alleges infringement of 1984 Elite game’s copyright.
  3. Prosecutors Score a Goal in FIFA 17 Gambling Case
  4. Steve Bannon sunk $60M of Goldman Sachs’ money into a failed World of Warcraft goldfarming scheme
  5. Trump’s Campaign CEO’s Little Known World of Warcraft Career
  6. Political chaos threatens the whole games business: From Trump to Brexit to the rise of anti-globalisation rhetoric, the conditions that allow games companies to do business are under attack
  7. ESA calls Trump’s immigration stance “reckless and misinformed”: US industry trade group promises vigilance against “misguided efforts that dim our frontiers”
  8. “Any pressure on visas getting into the US is worrisome” – Valve: Erik Johnson and Gabe Newell explain how Trump’s immigration policies could prompt The International to be moved out of the country
  9. Dozens of game makers contribute games to fight Trump on immigration: Freedom Bundle offers dozens of games, e-books for $30 donation to worthy causes.
  10. The long and troubled history of Apocalypse Now, the video game
  11. The Strong Museum seeks to explore the impact women have had on game dev
  12. Games in the media in 2016 – Overwatch comes out on top
  13. US games industry adds $11.7 billion to GDP – ESA
  14. Trade group’s economic impact report says: gaming supports more than 220,000 jobs, average compensation tops $97,000 a year
  15. eSports market to hit $696 million this year – Report: Newzoo projects total eSports market to reach $1.5 billion by 2020, with brand sponsorship and advertising leading the way
  16. Valve’s Gabe Newell: VR could “turn out to be a complete failure”: Rare interview tempers long-term optimism with tech/content/price realism.
  17. A Sliver Of The Future: How Virtual Reality Pushes Esports’ Boundaries
  18. EA fines Madden Bowl winner: Tournament winner loses $3,000 for posting offensive tweets despite warnings from publisher
  19. Madden Bowl winner represents latest black eye for EA Sports and eSports
  20. NBA 2K eLeague To Debut As First eSports League Operated By U.S. Pro Sports League
  21. NBA and Take-Two form NBA 2K eSports League
  22. The NBA Announces Plan To Start Its Own eSports NBA League
  23. NBA 2K’s ELeague Could Change The Competitive Gaming Scene
  24. Gabe Newell explains Valve’s budgeting process: there is none
  25. Virtual Reality, Facebook, and a Costly Non-Disclosure Agreement
  26. Facebook removing 200 Oculus Rift demo units from Best Buy stores
  27. Virtual Reality Becomes a $500 Million Actual Reality for Facebook
  28. Ubisoft’s 3rd quarter saw a rise in engagement, but a decrease in sales
  29. Activision Blizzard posts big sales, but Call of Duty fails to connect with fans
  30. Sony discontinues PlayStation Now on PS3, Vita, and most other devices
  31. Sony patents Vive-like tracking system, hints at wireless PSVR: Application shows Lighthouse-style set-up to counteract current light interference
  32. Kabam cuts Beijing team: Legacy of Zeus developers let go as company narrows list of key assets left to sell
  33. Counterpoint: As Denuvo Lauds Its Weeks-Long Control, 20 Year Old Game Still Selling Due To Its Modding Community
  34. Evolving Steam
  35. Steam kills Greenlight: Steam Direct will have devs pay an application fee for each game “to decrease the noise in the submission pipeline”
  36. Valve says goodbye to Steam Greenlight, hello to “Direct” publishing: Soon, anyone with paperwork and a fee payment will be able to sell on Steam.
  37. Konami’s profits up 70% in nine-month financials
  38. Activision Publishing cuts staff: Disappointing year prompts layoffs at studios including Infinity Ward and Beenox
  39. The Quest for the First FDA-Approved Video Game
  40. How a robot got Super Mario 64 and Portal “running” on an SNES – Or: How to stream video using 1.2 million console button presses per second.
  41. ASA Ruling on Queens Solitaire Games
  42. Why won’t the games industry share its digital data?: NPD, SuperData and Steam Spy offer up their thoughts

DIGITAL

  1. A battle rages for the future of the Web: Should the WWW be locked down with DRM? Tim Berners-Lee needs to decide, and soon.
  2. Maker Studios Braces for More Layoffs as Disney Plans to Shrink Creator Network
  3. Maker Studios Reportedly Slashing Its Creator Network Of “Thousands” To Just 300
  4. PewDiePie dropped by Maker & YouTube ad platform over antisemitic content: PewDiePie calls out “old school media” for attempt to “decrease my influence and my economic worth”
  5. YouTube Cancels PewDiePie Show After Disney Cuts Ties With Star Over Anti-Semitic Posts
  6. When did fascism become so cool? PewDiePie’s antics are the thin end of the wedge: A white guy with a net worth of $124m making poor brown people hold up a sign calling for genocide is pure banter, isn’t it?
  7. Pewdiepie Dropped By Disney Following Offensive Video Content
  8. Disney drops YouTube star PewDiePie over anti-Semitic content
  9. PewDiePie Incident Means More Scrutiny for Influencers: But ad buyers doubt marketers will pull budgets from all YouTube influencers
  10. How Wikipedia Is Cultivating an Army of Fact Checkers to Battle Fake News: The online encyclopedia has been fact checking the Internet for more than 15 years. Now it wants to bring its skeptical eye to the masses.
  11. Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle: Oracle insinuates Google was “a plagiarist” that committed “classic unfair use.”
  12. Oracle Files Its Opening Brief As It Tries (Again) To Overturn Google’s Fair Use Win On Java APIs
  13. Authors Alliance Amicus Brief Supports Fair Use Defense In Georgia State Case
  14. Wikipedia bans Daily Mail for “poor fact checking, sensationalism, flat-out fabrication”: Daily Mail is too unreliable and can’t be used as a source, Wikipedia editors rule.
  15. Handful of “highly toxic” Wikipedia editors cause 9% of abuse on the site: New study of Wikipedia comments reveals most attackers aren’t anonymous.
  16. PayPal Kills Canadian Paper’s Submission To Media Awards Because Article Had Word ‘Syrian’ In The Title
  17. Shopify’s Breitbart Fight Proves It: These Days, Tech Has to Take a Side
  18. Lawsuit alleges Magic Leap workplace is ‘misogynistic,’ ‘dysfunctional’
  19. Hedge funds reportedly want to buy Mt. Gox bankruptcy claims: A US lawyer has even set up a website to make this process easier.
  20. Women filmed by Ottawa ‘pick-up artist’ may have no legal remedy
  21. Maniac Killers of the Bangalore IT Department: Why is India obsessed with crimes committed by software engineers?
  22. First Amendment Protects Google’s De-Indexing of “Pure Spam” Websites–e-ventures v. Google (Eric Goldman)
  23. Internet firms’ legal immunity is under threat: Platforms have benefited greatly from special legal and regulatory treatment
  24. UK Search Engines Will Sign Up To A ‘Voluntary’ Code On Piracy — Or Face The Consequences
  25. Is the Internet a wilderness of commodity news?
  26. Can Snapchat really save news? More than half of users don’t follow outlets on the platform
  27. Don’t fear artificial intelligence: experts
  28. Artificial Intelligence forges ahead of the law
  29. It’s not as simple as man versus machine. (Sara Watson)
  30. Netflix Cheating Is Common, But Is It Really All That Bad?: Almost half of couples that binge-watch together have been disloyal
  31. Patent Troll Sues Netflix, Soundcloud, Vimeo And More For Allowing Offline Viewing
  32. I Helped Create the Milo Trolling Playbook. You Should Stop Playing Right Into It.
  33. NHL’s First Games In Live VR To Be Seen By Canadians With Headsets Found In Cases Of Beer
  34. Manchester United set to launch worldwide premium streaming app costing up to £4.99 per month with services in over 160 countries
  35. 200 Coders and Hackers United to Save NASA’s Climate Data From Deletion

CREATIVITY

  1. Kesha releases emails allegedly sent by Dr. Luke
  2. The Moral Rights in a Banksy?
  3. The Met Goes Public Domain With CC0, But It Shouldn’t Have To
  4. How the copyright industry works methodically to erode your civil liberties and human rights
  5. The Need Right Now for Subversive Photography: What does it mean for a photograph to challenge what we know about the world and reveal new aspects of it?
  6. Maasai people of East Africa fighting against cultural appropriation by luxury fashion labels: Their name and image is estimated to be worth billions of dollars 
  7. Beyoncé to Get Lawyers in “Formation”
  8. Paul McCartney chants ‘Get Back’ again – The Future of Copyright Termination 
  9. Is There Copyright Infringement in Whoville?
  10. Prince’s music will be on Spotify and other services starting Sunday: When you’re facing a $100M tax bill, it’s time to make a deal.
  11. University Rejection of Students’ Marijuana – Themed T-Shirt Violates First Amendment – Gerlich v. Leath (Eric Goldman)
  12. Use of P’s photos to advertise D’s goods must be challenged via copyright, not Lanham Act, under Dastar (Rebecca Tushnet)
  13. Back To Basics: Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen Presents Near-Term FTC Reforms
  14. Not Everyone Is Geeking Out Over Saudi Arabia’s First Comic Con: The cosplay fest is headed to the religious kingdom, but certain restrictions apply — especially for women
  15. How Ancient Legends Gave Birth to Modern Superheroes
  16. Can AI Make Musicians More Creative?: Google And Sony Want To Change The Way Artists Think About Artificial Intelligence
  17. 2016 Copyright Year in Review
  18. Robots As Legal Metaphors (Ryan Calo)
  19. What Intellectual Property Can Learn From Informational Privacy, And Vice Versa (Diana Liebenau)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Fuss over American Super Bowl ads ignores reality of Internet TV
  2. CRTC wireless code review generates regulatory risk: Desjardins analyst
  3. Why the Wireless Industry Fears Bill Transparency and Bans on Unlocking Fees (Michael Geist)
  4. Comcast, AT&T Are Paying Minority Groups To Support Killing Net Neutrality
  5. Wyden, Other Senators Warn That Net Neutrality Repeal Will Make SOPA Backlash Look Like A Fireside Snuggle
  6. Tom Wheeler: Trump, GOP Plan To ‘Modernize’ The FCC A ‘Fraud’
  7. The Trump administration’s other war on the media
  8. FCC Commissioner Thinks Ultra-Fast Broadband Just a ‘Novelty’
  9. ISPs ask lawmakers to kill privacy rules, and they’re happily obliging: Wheeler-era FCC rules that protect Web browsing data could be overturned.
  10. “Broadband death star bill” blown up by municipal Internet advocates: Virginia anti-municipal broadband bill replaced by minor record-keeping change.
  11. Yahoo reveals more breachiness to users victimized by forged cookies: Some accounts may have been accessed with forged cookies as recently as 2016.
  12. Verizon Finally Gets Around To Telling Yahoo That It Ain’t All That
  13. A Little Something Called Competition Forces Verizon To Bring Back Unlimited Data
  14. Verizon offers unlimited data and won’t throttle video (unlike T-Mobile): Verizon’s $80 plan has unlimited phone data and 10GB of 4G LTE tethering.
  15. Charter wrongly charged customers $10 “Wi-Fi Activation” fee, gets sued: Charter admits billing mistake in former Bright House area but faces a lawsuit.
  16. Sewer broadband fraudsters handed lengthy prison terms: Bogus $200 million fiber network racket leads to collective 44 years in the slammer.
  17. Lawyer’s claim: Feds issued a subpoena regarding Fox News sexual harassment scandal
  18. A century and a half of Northern telecom innovations: Tracing 150 years of Canadian technological contributions to communication, from Bell to BlackBerry
  19. The global media landscape: in eight charts
  20. What does The Queen Mary International Dispute Resolution 2016 Survey tell us about the future direction of TMT disputes?
  21. 2016 International Dispute Resolution Survey: An insight into resolving Technology, Media and Telecoms Disputes

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Canada’s Federal Court awards damages against a foreign website for breach of privacy laws
  2. Oh, Sure, Suddenly Now The House Intelligence Boss Is Concerned About Surveillance… Of Mike Flynn
  3. Judge sides with Microsoft, allows “gag order” challenge to advance – Court: “First Amendment rights may outweigh the Government interest in secrecy.”
  4. Court Says Microsoft Can Sue Government Over First Amendment-Violating Gag Orders
  5. What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?: DHS says agents are in the right to ask for passwords, decryption help.
  6. Twitter to judge: Let us tell everyone exactly how many secret orders we get: Government fights Twitter’s attempts at transparency with generic filing.
  7. Canada will soon force companies to disclose hacking attempts, data breaches
  8. Amnesty International uncovers phishing campaign against human rights activists: Attacker targeted groups in Qatar, Nepal using extensive fake social media profile.
  9. Russia Considers Returning Snowden to U.S. to ‘Curry Favor’ With Trump: Official
  10. Landmark Court Decision Means Canada Has Now Joined The ‘Right To Be Forgotten Globally’ Club
  11. Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives: He’s not charged with a crime. Judge demands he help prosecutors build their case.
  12. After Passing Worst Surveillance Law In A Democracy, UK Now Proposes Worst Anti-Whistleblowing Law
  13. UK government’s huge citizen data grab is go – where are the legal safeguards? – Analysis: Whitehall’s digital strategy lands a day after peers debate Digital Economy Bill.
  14. UK Police Spy On Journalists At Small Town Paper, Gather One Million Minutes Worth Of Call Data
  15. UK Train Operators Plan To Charge Passengers Using Their Biometrics
  16. UK gov’t hit by 188 serious cyberattacks in the past three months: NCSC claims that Russia and China have stepped up the game.
  17. DHS Secretary Says Agency Is Planning On Demanding Foreigners’ Social Media Account Passwords
  18. Ohio Arsonist Gets Busted By His Own Pacemaker
  19. Now sites can fingerprint you online even when you use multiple browsers: Online tracking gets more accurate and harder to evade.
  20. Does Facebook Have the Right to Challenge Search Warrants Seeking Facebook Users’ Data? New York’s Highest Court Hears Argument 
  21. Republican senators concerned about Yahoo’s “candor” concerning data breaches: In new letter, two GOP senators say company has been “unable to provide answers.”
  22. Digital star chamber: Algorithms are producing profiles of you. What do they say? You probably don’t have the right to know (Frank Pasquale)
  23. Get To Know Me: Protecting Privacy And Autonomy Under Big Data’s Penetrating Gaze (Sheri B. Pan)
  24. Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy (Emily B. Laidlaw)

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